Painting or coating applications for motor vehicle applications generally entail large, expensive installations within a vehicle assembly plant. Ongoing efforts to reduce costs and increase plant efficiencies have led to a desire for increasingly smaller coating plants, as smaller coating installations generally consume less energy during operation than larger installations. Further, smaller coating installations offer increased installation flexibility and greater utilization rates of plant floor space.
Quality and environmental concerns generally require large coating installations having separate booths for application of different coating layers, e.g., an exterior paint layer and interior paint layer. For example, generally an interior paint booth and an exterior paint booth are provided separately along a coating installation line. The separate interior and exterior booths are provided in order to ensure that application of different coating layers, minimize overspray of coating materials, especially where different materials are applied in different layers. Therefore traditionally the interior and exterior booths are separated from one another, and include separate support systems such as coating waste disposal mechanisms, manual backup zones for application robots, etc.
Accordingly, there is a need for a coating installation that allows for application of different coating layers and/or different coating materials within a reduced footprint as compared with traditional coating installations having separate booths.